


Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

by Kekune



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Pen & Paper - Fandom, Splittermond
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, F/F, Hope and freedom, Memories, Poetic rambling, Yearning, remembering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:21:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22257097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kekune/pseuds/Kekune
Summary: Dwarven noblewoman Isertha has fled the duties and boundaries of a golden cage made to keep her locked away for the rest of her life.She's on the run now, leaving an unloving old life behind her while searching for the woman she fell in love with a few years ago.The woman who made her realize how important freedom and hope actually are.These are her memories.
Relationships: Original D&D Character(s)/Original D&D Character(s), Original Dungeons & Dragons Character(s) & Original Dungeons & Dragons Character(s), Original Dungeons & Dragons Character(s)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

**Author's Note:**

> "Hope Is The Thing With Feathers" is a poem by Emily Dickinson which inspired me to write this short drabble about yearning and freedom.  
> It's a beautiful poem about hope which can be found even in the darkest of places. Hope is always there - never leaving - without asking for anything in return.

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

From far away a few curious villagers had spot a woman - a dwarf probably judging by her size - sitting there awake next to a barely lit campfire, only a few sparks left glooming in the fireplace.  
She was looking into the night sky, searching for a specific constellation maybe or just admiring the view of the starry firmament.  
Perhaps she was just bored with the burden of idleness. 

Her whole adventuring party seemed to be asleep already and she had agreed to keep the first watch.  
It was cold outside, and the wind brought fresh air from the ocean and the icy mountains surrounding them.  
Isertha couldn’t care less about the weather and the frost starting to whiten the valley around her, turning her surroundings into a glittering wonderland.  
Her home country, Frynjord, had only one season after all: eternal winter and she was quite used to it by now. Growing up in the harsh environment of mountains and their frosty unloving caverns had made her tough and sturdy, maybe even solitary.

White hills and rocks covered every last bit of Frynjord‘s landscape, forming a world which would probably have looked charming in a snow globe. Whereas in reality snow globes were just pretty trinkets decorating the castles and homes of the rich people here in the South.

She herself couldn‘t care less for the glittering frost, its sparkles and its general beauty. It was reminding her of memories as unpleasant and unforgiving as the low temperatures.  
But without real snow this place near Midstad felt like summer to her. 

She couldn’t really keep an eye on the surroundings while she was revelling in the past, but she somehow had the feeling that this night would be a quiet one anyway, uneventful, boring, made to reminisce. 

A flashback started to flicker in her mind, the shadow of a bird flying high above her head.  
A memory that felt so real she was certain if she had listened closely she would have heard the sound of flattering wings surrounding her.  
This was all it took for Isa to fully remember, to relive one of the moments she kept hidden, a secret, locked away for a quiet moment like this, when she needed it the most, when the yearning and longing for freedom had become too much to bear.

This one night in her memories was one of the few rare times Frynjord wasn’t completely covered in snow.  
Mokra and her had managed to escape their duties, their chains, their so-called golden cages, to watch the few birds who got lost in the mountains while flying south.  
The girls rarely had the chance to see birds this close, so they just enjoyed their company and each other’s. 

When the sun started to vanish behind the horizon, the birds turned into merely black spots in the distance.

Isa could see a sudden spark in Mokra’s eyes, a spark that seemed to be contagious, if she would have looked in a mirror in that exact moment her eyes would have been full of life and dreams as well.  
Wishes and dreams of freedom being brought by the birds which were exactly as lost in this place as they both were at this very moment. As they both would have been now if she had stayed in Frynjord. 

“Hope is the thing with feathers.”, Mokra had whispered back then.  
Just these six words, nothing else after them.

Only later that night Isa had understood a meaning behind that sentence.  
“…and that’s why there are no birds in Frynjord.”, she had realized.


End file.
